Georgia Loses Legal Code Copyright Clash At Supreme Court (bloomberglaw.com) 158
schwit1 writes: Georgia lost a close U.S. Supreme Court case over the state's ability to copyright its annotated legal code, in a ruling that dissenting justices said would shock states with similar arrangements. Copyright protection doesn't extend to the annotations in the state's official annotated code, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a 5-4 majority on Monday that crossed ideological lines. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joined Roberts. The state's lawyer warned at the oral argument that a ruling against it would "blow up" not only Georgia's copyright regime but similar ones in about a third of the states with similar setups. Indeed, the ruling "will likely come as a shock to the 25 other jurisdictions -- 22 States, 2 Territories, and the District of Columbia -- that rely on arrangements similar to Georgia's to produce annotated codes," Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a dissent joined by Justice Samuel Alito and partially by Justice Stephen Breyer. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote her own dissent, joined by Breyer. Further reading: Supreme Court Says Georgia's 'Official Code' Is Public Domain -- Including Annotations.
Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:4)
Re:Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:5, Interesting)
Therefore is owned by the people of that state. Not some legal firm.
The state government contracted out with an exclusive agreement to a private sector firm for publishing rights, but the state maintained copyright. What swayed the SC was that the annotations were written primarily by state legislators and staffers and paid for by state funds, leaving it squarely in the public domain.
What's interesting is the split for the SC on this decision. Sotomayor, Kagan, Gorsuch, Roberts, and Kavanaugh on the majority side, with RBG, Thomas, Alito, and Breyer on the dissenting side. Not the grouping you usually see. I'm not entirely sure why the dissenters did so, since this seems to be a "correct" ruling with no clear ideological backing/agenda behind it.
Re: Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:4, Interesting)
Ginsburg at least is a copyright maximalist. Her daughter is just as bad. Breyer I'm surprised to see in the minority.
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That is perhaps the strangest split I've seen with the current SC.
Re:Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's nice to think that not everything is divided along the lines of the personal politics of the justices. At least here we have a different set of strong personal preferences to rule according to.
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It would be nicer if law weren't decided by personal preferences.
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Re: Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:2)
The will of the people.
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SC represents the will of the people. And people are strange.
Re: Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't and it shouldn't. The whole reason for the separation of government and the judiciary is that Judges are *supposed* to be creatures of facts and logic, not popular will. The separation exists to stop mob politics from enacting unjust laws or engaging in unjust prosecutions.
Unfortunately the US, uniquely to the world, has a concept of "republican" and "democrat" judges. In most other countries , judges endorsing political parties would be cause for anti-corruption police to be kicking in doors. But the US has been hopelessly and possibly irreversibly corrupted by money and a governance system that has been captured by wealthy elites and partisan party hacks. Corruption is so integrated its become protected by suspiciously convenient and frankly illogical interpretations of the constitution that deem money to be speech and organizations to be people.
And its not getting better. People elected the current government to "drain the swamp", boy did that turn out to be a con job.
Re: Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, in this ruling, Kavanaugh and Gorsuch, both nominated by Trump, ruled pro-people and anti-swamp. Keeping the legal codex behind a paywall and profiting from people trying to stay informed about law is just a step above keeping laws secret from the people or making them up on the spot.
The SCOTUS made it pretty clear in that ruling. There's nothing wrong with private entities releasing versions of the legal code with added annotations and having that copyrighted for the creative contributions. But this is the main, official, primary source version. There is no "Georgia unannotated legal code". This is THE code, and any form of restricting access to it goes massively against public interest. You can't have a lawful society if the society is barred from learning the letter of law in any way.
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Re: Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:4)
The will of the people.
That's what the legislature is for. The court is to interpret law, regardless of the popular opinion.
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The will of the people.
That's what the legislature is for. The court is to interpret law, regardless of the popular opinion.
And the supreme court is to interpret the constitution, regardless of popular opinion.
Re: Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:5, Insightful)
And they've done a good job of interpreting it. Only some speech is actually protected, and the right to own firearms is only infringed when they say it is okay.
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How should they be decided?
How about the actual text of the law. We can add "legislative intent" if we have a good enough record to prevent absurdities like comma placement inverting the actual intent of the bill, but this should be minimized.
We have a legislature to make laws... The courts (and especially not the Supreme Court) are not supposed to be super legislatures, but that's where we stand today.
Re: Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:2)
Congress makes laws, the Executive carries out the laws, and the Supreme Court interprets the laws
Re: Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:3)
Yes, but not really... If 5 justices voted to say "bear arms" was a typo and was talking about sleeveless shirts; you will see the wheels of checks & balances start turning. Congress will replace those justices or governors will amend the constitution or new laws will be made or the Executive will not enforce.
The US govt is pretty well defined. It's the public that is the problem. We focus too much on the unelected (POTUS & SC) and too little on the elected (Senate, House, & Governors).
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Never really been a true democracy. Democratic republic, sure. But never a true democracy. At least on a federal level. State level possibly, county and city level most certainly, and may the god of your choice assist you should you ever experience the governing a Historic Committee or HOA can provide.
Re: Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:2)
Inflexibility with regard to fucking up peoples rights is a great feature.
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We focus too much on the unelected (POTUS
Explain?
Just that 120 million Americans thought they were voting who to elect, even if half of them disliked the outcome.
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Sadly, deciding things according to the text of the Constitution is rather unfashionable in some circles. It's an imperfect world.
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To be fair, a government that actually respected the US Constitution would not work. It has needed several amendments that were not made, but were instead fudged. The interstate commerce clause is only one of several examples.
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That is perhaps the strangest split I've seen with the current SC.
Yes, and Thomas is normally a personal-rights man. How can he justify having a population abide by a legal code they have to buy access to?
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Yes, and Thomas is normally a personal-rights man.
With all that's going on in the world, I needed a good laugh. Thanks.
It's not law. It's somebody's thoughts about the l (Score:2)
Suppose you write a book about copyright law. You spend a few years researching, carefully citing all kinds of court cases, quotes from the legistlators who sponsored the law etc. You write the best, most informative book about copyright law that has ever been written. Yale law school wants to use your book as the textbook for an advanced class. Can you copyright your work?
That's what this case is about. The annotations are NOT law.
They are some people's thoughts about the law, talking about cases in whi
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A product of the government, created as part of government operations by a government employee or by someone acting on behalf of the government, is by law public domain. Georgia (et al.) was trying to have its cake, and eat it, too.
F-35 software actually isn't public domain (Score:2)
Legally, what is created BY the FEDERAL government doesn't have copyright. They can and often do get companies to create things for which the company maintains copyright. For example the software of the F-35 is not public domain, because it wasn't created BY the federal government.
For another example, they can and do have programs to create various types of training that the government seems to be be needed. To get people to create curriculum that wouldn't normally be profitable in the private market, the
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But this particular set of annotations has official status in deciding cases, so logically it's part of the code as interpreted by courts. Would you install and trust an operating system as it was originally released years ago, lacking all its updates to current working state?
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> But this particular set of annotations has official status in deciding cases
Citation?
No doubt they are useful - so is Black's law dictionary and a lot of other privately-produced law books.
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What the annotations show is how the courts have interpreted the law. You really can't find out the law without knowing the annotations.
For example, the law in California says a person's name cannot be placed on the ballot as a candidate for another term who had served:
However U.S Term Limits, Inc. v. Thornton The Supreme Court of The United States ruled that the law is in
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You can easily give me the chapter and section where those words are found, since you have the annotated code handy, right?
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"Words like "normal" and "usual" can have had their meaning litigated over dozens or hundreds of cases"
Thousands, even. And *one* of those cases might be mentioned in an annotation to whatever code section you're looking at, but most likely none are. Most such cases which set precedent are readily available via Google, however, if you let your Lexis subscription expire. Yes, sometimes an annotation points to an interesting case, but then so does friggin Wikipedia, which is likely to mention the same case
Typically the author owns copyright (Score:2)
For a commissioned work, typically the author, nor the customer, keeps their copyright.
In no case can the customer retroactively demand copyright after the work is completed, as would be the case here. Nor can the copyright holder retroactively revoke the license that eas part of the contract. "Pray that i don't alter it further" is criminal..(whatever their deal was, it's a done deal).
The two exceptions are if you're a regular employee hired to write these things as your regular job, or
The contract speci
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Re:Why is someone trying to copywrite the law? (Score:5, Insightful)
Not the only recent case with an interesting split. In the recent decision of Ramos v. Louisiana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramos_v._Louisiana [wikipedia.org] which essentially requires unanimous jury verdicts to convict for most crimes at a state level, the dissent was Roberts, Alito and Kagan. Most of the Justices are not simple ideologues and have complicated, and often nuanced legal approaches.
Yeah, I've noticed it's not always about the politics behind it, but there might be something technical or procedural that drives a particular justice's decision. Like it might give too much power to one group, or may weaken the power of the court in other types of cases, etc. But as the partisanship of the case increases, the more likely it is for the decision to be along party lines (with Roberts as often as not the deciding factor). That's partly why I think, for the good of the country, while some ideologues are inevitable just given how justices are nominated and confirmed, it's important to have a couple moderates on the bench as well.
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Money (Score:3)
Second, there's all kinds of nasty legal tricks you can do to cheat folks out of money when you know the law and they don't. It increases the barrier to entry for our legal system and benefits the wealthy who can afford to pay to access the law.
This is yet another power grab by the top 1%.
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Anything that makes practicing the law more expensive makes obtaining legal services more expensive. You're not just pricing people out of the dirty tricks hidden in the annotations -- which there may not actually be many of -- but you're pricing people out of access to the law period.
Which means that those who do have access can engage in legal bullying (threats to sue or dishonest misrepresentation of criminal risks, etc) and actual illegal behavior which counts on civil suits for enforcement.
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My firm is very much looking forward to doing business with you.
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I can see one area were GA has a point. I can put their laws up on a WEB site with a great search function. But I can either change laws that I do not like. Or I can say "Too much cost/work, I will just stop applying changes".
So now people could be looking at the wrong/old laws, causing them harm. This can probably be fixed by:
1. The State maintains and keeps a free, easy to use, easy to access site up to date.
2. And/Or allow people to sue the maintainers of the sites (including state maintained sites)
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In my country, even the official government sites that list the laws have disclaimers about not necessarily being accurate, which makes sense as the law might have just been changed and mistakes happen.
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Around here, new laws don't go into effect immediately but at a later, specified date. That gives the people running the official government sites the time to add the new laws.
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it varies here, the emergency laws recently passed went into affect as soon as given royal assent (automatic but still needs a signature), other times there may be a date when they take affect or signing is delayed. Criminal law usually does have a date it goes into affect whereas funding laws might be in affect as soon as signed.
There's still a chance of an error, especially as so many laws amend previous laws. I believe there is a gazette or such which is considered the official published law. There's als
people are more likey to take the deal vs an long (Score:2)
people are more likely to take the deal vs an long and high priced trail + with the chance of hardtime VS an deal that may be in a easy lockup.
Not really (Score:2)
US law is precedent-based as well as stuatute based. So if multiple judges cite and follow a precedent, it becomes the law by result.
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If annotations were not the law nor legally binding nobody would care about rulings by the Supreme Courts. (State and Federal) People do care because those annotations are very binding.
OBEY the law, but KNOW the law (Score:5, Informative)
Georgia and the other states that use copyright to prevent redistribution of their statutes (plus annotations, precedents, references) prevent THEIR OWN RESIDENTS from being fully cognizant of the law. They then use that law against those same residents.
The EFF and PRO did a great job getting the copyright out of the law. If we're subject to it... we should be able to read it, copy it, share it, discuss it, and in some cases -- if we think it's wrong -- fight it.
Good job to winning this stage of the fight... against "our elected officials" trying to represent a concept, and not our wants/needs.
E
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I would argue that when the state restricts dissemination of the law, ignorance is a perfectly valid (ethically and morally) defense, If the people don't own it in it's entirety, it's not a valid law.
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What looks pretty stupid is using something that you yourself identified as not fitting my premise and then strawmanning it.
Now have a look at how public domain building codes are.
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If the annotation that says that you have to be clear of the intersection before it turns red vs having to not enter the intersection before it turns red as the point of the law is not just safety but also to maintain the flow of traffic. And you enter an intersection when the light is green and it turns red before you can exit the intersection and you get a red light how are you to know that what you did was illegal?
You really don't get what annotations about the law are.
Re:OBEY the law, but KNOW the law (Score:4, Insightful)
I don't think this was really Georgia's intent, and I'm not defending them on this either. I think what we have is that they outsourced the publishing to a third party rather than do this themselves. Third parties don't do this out of the goodness of their hearts, and Georgia isn't paying them to do this either. They need to make sure there's a market for the books before they print them so that they're not left with a few truck loads of books that no one wants because some web site has put it all up for free. Another case where the free market is probably not the best solution to a problem.
Re:OBEY the law, but KNOW the law (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:OBEY the law, but KNOW the law (Score:5, Interesting)
This ruling probably won't have the effect you're thinking it will. These annotated court decisions will not suddenly become public domain, free for all to see and use. Nothing requires the state to make these annotations. So the Georgia government will probably simply stop making them, because without a copyright, they are no longer a revenue source. Instead, private companies will step in and sell the annotated copies on their own, like LexisNexis does. The free public domain text of court decisions you'll get from the state will be unannotated with no cross-references.
The reason the state made the annotations was to standardize them, so everyone would have access to them and all lawyers (who bought acopy) were playing on a level playing field. If the state stops providing an "official" set of annotations and private companies start to make them instead, then the rich will have access to a better resource than the poor because they'll be able to buy annotations from a company which does a more thorough job making the annotations but charge more for it.
The obvious work-around is for the state to continue making the annotations, chalking it up as a cost of governing for the greater good and simply eating the cost. However, this ruling does not require states to do that. So I expect a lot of states will just do whatever costs them less, rather than do what's better for The People. That's basically what this decision amounts to - whether these annotations are paid for by the lawyers who need to use them to argue court cases, or paid for by The People via general tax revenue. With this ruling, either the lawyers get a "free ride" (the people pay for their annotations), or the level playing field of state-provided annotations is gone.
Last time I checked, I paid for it (Score:2)
Every law that was ever codified is paid for by taxes, i.e. everyone who finances their very existence and gives them work. Even in dictatorship, how much more in democracies. How the hell do you think you could justify copyrighting that? Talk about not understanding who you work for!
Sad it was this contentious (Score:2)
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The laws in the this Georgia case were indeed public domain. It was only the annotations that were copyrighted by the state, and the annotations don't care that much legel weight and more about what were the legislators thinking or intending.
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Don't be to certain about that. One post above listed an annotation that referred to decisions of the Georgia Supreme Court which made many portions of a law unenforceable.
Good. (Score:5, Insightful)
The state's lawyer warned at the oral argument that a ruling against it would "blow up" not only Georgia's copyright regime but similar ones in about a third of the states with similar setups.
Good, they needed to be blown up.
No chit (Score:3)
You can call it whatever you want, but if you don't follow these "annotations" you are breaking the laws and the state can come take your stuff. The people shall not be ruled by secret laws.
Patent not copyright (Score:2)
Patent a law, it's better than copyright.
For example, patent a law that forbids stealing cars. Then, when you steal a car if they try to charge you just put on a Soviet accent and say "No! I charge YOU".
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Patent a law, it's better than copyright.
For example, patent a law that forbids stealing cars. Then, when you steal a car if they try to charge you just put on a Soviet accent and say "No! I charge YOU".
Hrm, wouldn't that mean if I don't steal a car, I run afoul of your patent?
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And like patents, all laws should expire. If legislator want them renewed, they should specifically have to vote to do so. There is no reason some arcane law that was put on the books in 1928 should still be a valid law in 2020.
Why does everyone hate the 14th Amendment? (Score:3)
Bullshit meter pegged (Score:2)
FTA: "... the annotations, which includes things like commentaries, case notations, and editor’s notes, don’t have the force of law".
If everybody involved agrees that the annotations are tremendously advantageous in preparing, defending, and prosecuting cases, (and it seems they do), then said annotations at least have a force that's equivalent to that of the law. By the mere fact of providing explanations and interpretations of the law that even judges refer to when making decisions, (not to me
Not allowed to read, not rquired to abide by it (Score:2)
If I'm not allowed to READ the law then I don't have to abide by the law. So FUCK off Georgia!
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On a side note, it is pretty comforting to me to see cases like this that are divided but not on partisan lines - it demonstrates that judges selected by either "side" are actually more similar than not, in that they can easily group on different matters along different lines of thought.
The Supreme Court can be really fickle, depending on the type of case. If you get a case like gun control, abortion, or voting rights then you can generally expect a partisan split (also depends on the case/strength of the precedent being set-sometimes you'll get some surprising decisions if a justice decides to side with a technical or procedural facet of the case over straight legality). But in less ideologically or agenda-driven cases you will often see cross party splits, you'll just get multiple opin
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The Supreme Court can be really fickle, depending on the type of case. If you get a case like gun control, abortion, or voting rights then you can generally expect a partisan split (also depends on the case/strength of the precedent being set-sometimes you'll get some surprising decisions if a justice decides to side with a technical or procedural facet of the case over straight legality). But in less ideologically or agenda-driven cases you will often see cross party splits, you'll just get multiple opinions written.
Maybe, but given Thomas's seemingly newfound respect for precedent and adamancy that it shouldn't be overturned lightly or without due consideration for why the precedent was set to begin with, I have a sneaky suspicion that all those Republican voters who are hoping for Roe v. Wade to be overturned are going to get a nasty surprise, ironically from the right side of the court.
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all those Republican voters who are hoping for Roe v. Wade to be overturned
It's about as hemmed-in as it's going to get. This was a huge issue thirty, forty years ago. Today? Sure, some still care and always will. And every Republican is at least nominally pro-life, just as every Democrat is nominally pro-labor, but most of them don't do anything about either one.
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Obviously you're not aware of what's been happening in the red states. Republican governors/legislators are doing everything they can to get a case before the Supreme Court that will overturn Roe v. Wade. They think this court will be the one to deliver it.
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I agree that it's nice to see the court split on something and not along party lines, but I wish it was about something else. This should have been unanimous. I have no idea what the four dissenting justices were thinking.
Government secrets should only be allowed when they are absolutely necessary for national security. How can a democracy function if the constituents don't actually know what the government is doing? Furthermore, copyright is a thing that doesn't make sense in relation to anything produced
Re:What is nuts to me is that this was split (Score:5, Informative)
Copyrighting statutes and other products of a legislative assembly make sense if the context is to make sure that no one can try to foist fake laws, proceedings or other records. Probably the oldest form of copyright in the Common Law tradition was the King's Press, which in England issued paper copy of laws, proclamations, and other proceedings of Parliament or the Sovereign. But the whole point of that wasn't to hide or obscure laws, but rather to make sure that everyone knew that the Great Seal of Parliament or the Sovereign's Seal meant this was a bona fide and legally-binding document.
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That is extremely interesting. I'm not immediately sure how that changes my position, but it certainly gives me something to think about. Thank you.
Publishing (Score:3)
It isn't the law itself that is copyrighted, but the annotations. From what I understand of the case, most legislatures pay a third party, often LexisNexis, to write the annotations. The argument goes that it isn't the work product of the legislature itself, but of a third party, therefore is copyrightable.
It's kind of a messy area of the copyright law. Think of it this way - say a state government pays you, as a photographer, to take publicity photos of an event. As a photographer, do you loose your copyri
Re:Publishing (Score:4, Insightful)
It's kind of a messy area of the copyright law. Think of it this way - say a state government pays you, as a photographer, to take publicity photos of an event. As a photographer, do you loose your copyright on the images because a state government hired you to do so? Traditionally photographers maintain copyright on their images unless a contract is written specifically transferring copyright to the client.
I think in this case a better analogy is the state government uses their on-staff photographer (who is a full time state employee using state provided equipment) to take a picture, but then contracts you out to develop prints and distribute that picture. The state government even provides the caption for that picture. The argument is that the public has already paid to have that picture created so they shouldn't have to pay again to get it.
Re:Publishing (Score:5, Interesting)
It isn't the law itself that is copyrighted, but the annotations. From what I understand of the case, most legislatures pay a third party, often LexisNexis, to write the annotations. The argument goes that it isn't the work product of the legislature itself, but of a third party, therefore is copyrightable.
Any "work for hire" by a government agency should belong to the people, who can access it and use it any way they see fit, unless there is some legitimate reason to keep it a secret. That clearly doesn't apply to annotations in the law, regardless of whom was hired to produce it, at public expense.
It's kind of a messy area of the copyright law. Think of it this way - say a state government pays you, as a photographer, to take publicity photos of an event. As a photographer, do you loose your copyright on the images because a state government hired you to do so?
You certainly should. That is a clear "work for hire" situation.
Traditionally photographers maintain copyright on their images unless a contract is written specifically transferring copyright to the client.
And that is fine, provided no public money is involved.
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It's kind of a messy area of the copyright law. Think of it this way - say a state government pays you, as a photographer, to take publicity photos of an event. As a photographer, do you loose your copyright on the images because a state government hired you to do so? Traditionally photographers maintain copyright on their images unless a contract is written specifically transferring copyright to the client.
In this case, that's exactly what happened: the committee contracted with a branch of Lexis-Nexus to write the annotations. The contract specified that the copyright would belong to the committee and thus to the state.
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Just about any government contract I've ever seen that involves intellectual property makes it very clear that the state owns the copyright on anything you produce. I have a government contract up here in Canada, and the Intellectual Property section of the contract makes it clear that the Crown owns all IP my company produces, and that if I want to make it available to a third party, I have to get their permission.
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Re:Publishing (Score:5, Informative)
But Roberts wrote that the annotations were, in effect, law:
Georgia minimizes the OCGA annotations as non-binding and non-authoritative, but that description undersells their practical significance. Imagine a Georgia citizen interested in learning his legal rights and duties. If he reads the economy-class version of the Georgia Code available online, he will see laws requiring political candidates to pay hefty qualification fees (with no indigency exception), criminalizing broad categories of consensual sexual conduct,and exempting certain key evidence in criminal trials from standard evidentiary limitations—with no hint that important aspects of those laws have been held unconstitutional by the Georgia Supreme Court. See OCGA 21–2–131, 16–6–2, 16–6–18, 16–15–9 (available at www.legis.ga.gov). Meanwhile, first-class readers with access to the annotations will be assured that these laws are, in crucial respects, unenforceable relics that the legislature has not bothered to narrow or repeal. See 21–2–131, 16–6–2, 16–6–18, 16–15–9 (available at https: //store.lexisnexis.com/products/official-code-of-georgia-annotated-skuSKU6647 for $412.00).
See here [techdirt.com].
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Please don't link to techdirt, which is a self-proclaimed rumormill. Just use the actual source.
https://www.documentcloud.org/... [documentcloud.org]
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On a side note, it is pretty comforting to me to see cases like this that are divided but not on partisan lines - it demonstrates that judges selected by either "side" are actually more similar than not, in that they can easily group on different matters along different lines of thought.
It was the newer justices that voted in the majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh joined Roberts.
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It has confounded Presidents since the beginning that Supreme Court justices aren't robots, that nominating a justice doesn't magically make them your ideological and political servant. Law can be conservative or liberal, but they don't match up exactly to the political axis.
One of the greatest innovations of the English Common Law was the at least partial walling off of judges from political considerations, and giving limited protection from being replaced at political whim. Judges should never be politici
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The courts are often divided in ways that don't normally follow politics. We usually get lots of press coverage of cases when politics is a major issue, but we rarely hear about cases that are more mundane. Ie, if you're not a lawyer then you probably didn't hear about this decision on CNN or Fox, it's much more esoteric than the mass market prefers. I can't even find mention on NPR which frequently has some interesting stuff about the court.
After all, most cases don't get to the supreme court unless there
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it demonstrates that judges selected by either "side" are actually more similar than not
Well, they're law nerds first and foremost. IIRC Antonin Scalia was a factor in Elena Kagan's nomination - he spoke to the Obama administration specifically asking for her to be nominated, even though he knew they would often disagree, because he respected her judgment even if he didn't always agree with her conclusions.
Re:This is why I will vote Biden in 2020 (Score:5, Informative)
How so? There were three conservative judges voting to make the law open, and two of the liberals. Trying to make the laws secret were two liberals and two conservatives. Your assertion is a non sequitur.
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Arkansas, Alabama, Idaho, Kansas, Mississippi, South Carolina, South Dakota and Tennessee filed a brief in support of Georgia's stance that the law should be copyrighted. It's not hard to detect a partisan lean in that list.
But I do agree that the supreme court results show that the party that appoints the next justice probably doesn't matter to this case.
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Put down your crack pipe. Three of the justices in the majority were Republican and both of the Trump appointees ruled against Georgia in this case.
At least do some basic research before spewing your idiocy all over the internet. Or just go to YouTube where it's the norm.
Re:This is why I will vote Biden in 2020 ??? (Score:2)
Both of the SC Judges nominated by Trump were against the annotations being protected by copyright. Doesn't it make more sense to stick with they guy who called things the way you wanted both times?
Says the guy who didn't pay any attention at all to the 5-4 decision, or the fact that bot
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What is NOT the Law are the annotations, which are provided after painstaking work by legal scholars, as a convenience.
No, they are provided in exchange for money from the public coffers.
What will happen now is that Lexis Nexis will take over the job of annotating the public laws and only subscribers will be able to obtain those annotations.
And that's fine. If they want to do it at their own expense, more power to them.
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Either they are necessary for understanding the law and its interpretation, and should therefore be part of it....
Or, they are just a convenience of someone's opinion that should have nothing to do with the law.
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Either they are necessary for understanding the law and its interpretation, and should therefore be part of it.... Or, they are just a convenience of someone's opinion that should have nothing to do with the law.
Annotations are not opinions, they're typically references and quotes it's more that the selection of cases and passages is a creative choice. They can also explain odd terms or reference doctrines but they're never defined by the annotation, it's just a short intro to their context. The problem is that if say a congressional committee made an officially annotated version of the Bill of Rights their references might be seen as more important than others that were not mentioned or quoted.
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Re:Don't Conflate the Law with Annotations (Score:5, Interesting)
Not quite. Maybe this ruling will spur changes that make you right.
I work with building codes all the time. Most municipalities and many states in the US use model national codes, as they don't have the time, money, and expertise to write their own from scratch. (Plus there's pressure to use a national code so that they're aren't hundreds of different codes across the country that architects and engineers have to learn.) The International Code Council codes and the Uniform codes are currently the most common in the US. Local and state governments publish amendments to the model codes. The codes are adopted into law by reference, with only the amendments available from the local government free to copy. The bodies that write the model codes jealously guard their copyright over them, and charge a significant amount of money to get a copy, either electronic or paper (less than LexisNexis, though). The electronic versions have all sorts of DRM attached to them that makes it hard to use to copy, paste, and print the way you'd like to do your job. Probably in an attempt to stave off similar legal battles, the ICC has free web access to their codes, but you can't even select text in it, let alone copy, paste, or print. (haven't tried to hack a way to do it) As far as I know, the current precedent lets the code bodies keep copyright over the model codes and don't allow the local governments' adoption to override that.
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